Summary Of A Vindication Of The Rights Of Women By Mary Wollstonecraft

Both ‘A Vindication of the Rights of Women’, written by Mary Wollstonecraft and ‘The Tempest’, written by William Shakespeare look at the ideological approaches to the body. Shakespeare and Wollstonecraft discuss how men control women’s bodies sexually using religion to justify it and politics to ensure they can maintain that control. They also discuss how men have taken it upon themselves to determine what a woman’s role is in society and by any means possible, restrict them to these roles which are used to benefit the male agenda. Ideological views have encouraged men for centuries that women are inferior to them. This has given men a foothold in determining what a woman’s role is in society, how she should dress and how she should conduct …show more content…
Prospero speaks of his wife to Miranda in attempt to guide her to lead her life like a woman of her time should. During this period, it was believed that the only option for women of this time was to get married as they were prevented from getting an education and were not allowed to own their own property. However, if they were not a virgin, it was difficult if not, impossible to marry. This is evident when Ferdinand first meets Miranda as the first thing he asks her is ‘If you be a maid or no?’2. This shows that his immediate concern is her virginity as she would have no value to him if she was not a virgin. The idea that women have been dictated to by men is reinstated by Mary Wollstonecraft in her essay, ‘A Vindication of the Rights of Woman’ when she states: ‘Women are told from their infancy, and taught by the example of their mothers’ . This suggests that women are indoctrinated by men from a very young age that they had to conduct themselves in a particular manner in order to receive the ‘protection of man’. Due to women being treated as second-class citizens, they were required to be obedient, pure and ‘should they be beautiful everything is needless, for at least twenty years of their lives.’ This quote reinstates the idea that men objectify women in their appearance and praise them for keeping their virginity. Through both …show more content…
Society created the idea that men were strong, the protector and the breadwinner whilst women were weak, beautiful, the housewife and the child bearer. It can be argued that these roles were created only to benefit men. This is clear in Wollstonecraft’s ‘A vindication of woman’s rights’ when she writes: Rousseau declares that a woman should never, for a moment, feel herself independent, that she That she should be governed by fear to exercise her natural cunning, and made a coquettish Slave in order to render her a more alluring object of desire, a sweeter companion to a